Our home school support group has a couple of Christmas traditions that we enjoy. Today at our annual Christmas Brunch we collected shoebox gifts for foster children in our county. Our 20 families filled 40+ shoeboxes with age appropriate gifts, festively wrapped and labeled them.

Next week we will go caroling at our county’s Human Services building to bless the social services workers there, and deliver our shoebox gifts. Home schoolers singing Christmas carols at a government building? Well, why not! Last year we did it, and they invited us back! One gentleman told me he had worked there twenty years and no one had ever come caroling. He loved our ‘heritage’ songs. I hate political correctness, but if that’s what it takes to get an open door to share the love of Christ, then so be it!

Foster families and kids often have a tough time at Christmas. Kids are displaced from their birth family – for good or bad – and extra mouths to feed, and extra gifts to purchase can stretch the budget of already stretched families. A simple shoebox full of fun gifts can make a child feel loved and special. I took my kids to Dollar Tree and we each filled one. The older kids helped the little kids fill theirs. It was easy, fun, and we know these modest treasures we will bring smiles to kids on Christmas. I asked my older adopted daughter if she remembered receiving Christmas gifts while in foster care. She said she got a few gifts, but not as much as now. She thought foster kids would really like it that people thought about them and wanted to bless them.

The Christmas season is a great time for families or groups of families to reach out to orphans. Whether by giving wrapped gifts, food, or time, love can overflow as we all do a little, so a lot will get done.

What can your family, church, or social group do to come alongside orphans this Christmas? There are many ideas, so pick one and get started blessing others. Be sure to share the greatest gift of all – God’s Son Jesus Christ, born to earth, so we could all be adopted into God’s Kingdom.